Marty Raney: Surviving Rolling Logs, Crashing Planes, and Strumming a Guitar on Denali’s Summit

As Season 13 of Homestead Rescue premieres on September 23, 2025, viewers will once again see Marty team up with his children Misty and Matt to help families survive off-grid. Since its debut in 2016, the series has followed the Raneys as they rescue struggling homesteads across America, combining Marty’s building skills with Misty’s farming expertise and Matt’s hunting and fishing know-how. The upcoming season opens with the episode “Hurricane Ravaged,” where the Raneys head to North Carolina to rebuild a homestead destroyed by Hurricane Helene. With that in mind, this striking black‑and‑white photograph of log trucks rolling down a small‑town main street feels like the perfect way to look back at Marty Raney’s roots, pulling him back to his beginnings.

In his own words, it is more than just a snapshot of an industry—it is the story of the people who shaped his character, his resilience, and his life’s path from logger to mountain guide and eventually to television homesteader.

Growing Up in Big Trees

“I grew up on 80 acres in an area called Big Trees, the last house on the Mount Si road, North Bend, Washington. Needless to say, logging country.” Raney recalls that his early life was surrounded by towering timber and men whose livelihood was wrapped up in it. It was here that a kid named Poncho opened the door to a dangerous, life‑defining trade.

Thanks to Poncho, Raney began washing log trucks for Trail Timber, Poncho’s father’s logging company. At 16, restless and ready, he quit school and asked Poncho’s dad for a real job.

“He looked at me, cigar dangling from his mouth, and asked, ‘What size shoes you wear?’ I said, ‘13.’ He went to the back of the shop and returned with a pair of size 13 cork boots… The next morning (5 am?), I was off to the Seattle Watershed.”

Baptism by Fire

That first day, Raney met Harold Hern, the boss—“Strong, smart, a little loud, and very impressionable.” Alongside Tim Kennedy and Leonard Eadus, he learned fast in what he calls “a baptism of fire.” From there, he bounced between logging outfits, each experience testing his grit and nearly costing him his life.

Later, at Bill Breymeyer Logging, Raney worked under Bill McCracken, a man he respected deeply. “He watched a four-foot diameter tree roll over the top of me. I survived.” At just 17, Raney was logging the Olympic Peninsula with Ernie Nielsen. “Whew. We got 38 off-highway loads in one day. Big. Wood.”

Alaska: The Next Frontier

As a teenager in 1974, he married Mollee Roestel, beginning the family partnership that would carry through all of life’s challenges. That same year, at 18, he also left Seattle, boarding an Alaska Airlines 737 for Ketchikan, thanks to Captain Duane Tibbles. From there, a Grumman Goose carried him to Prince of Wales Island—the mecca for logging. That same plane later crashed, killing some of his crew, a stark reminder of how unforgiving the work could be.

At 19, he landed in Haines, Alaska, to work at John Schnabel’s sawmill. “I remember the day he gave me a 10‑cent an hour raise. It felt good. I’ll never forget that.” Here, he also met Ted Smith, whom he described as “a unique man, a hard man, old school for sure. A logger.”

By the time Raney was 20, he and Mollee welcomed their first child, Melanie, on August 15, 1976. These early years of marriage and parenthood unfolded alongside his push north into Alaska, blending the responsibilities of raising a family with the rigors of a logger’s life.

But logging was harsh. Schnabel once sent a plane load of men to Wrangell for reconnaissance. The aircraft crashed, killing Ken Risher. “Rip Ken Risher,” Raney recalled, keeping the memory alive.

In Sitka, Raney met Arthur Mannix, who spoke often of Denali. Mannix eventually moved to Talkeetna and climbed the peak multiple times—a dream that inspired Raney himself. “And so did I. With my wife, and all four kids, over the years.”

Danger and Survival

The risks were constant. Raney once fell out of a 50‑foot tail tree. “Tim blew seven whistles for a dead guy. I woke up. I worked the rest of the day with a broken leg and a broken back. Went back to Alaska, cut the cast off, and went back to work. Sam and Harold would have been proud.”

Logging accidents like these were never far away. At Bill Breymeyer Logging, he survived when a four‑foot‑diameter tree rolled directly over him—a brush with death that left him shaken but alive. Such moments underscored how every day in the woods could turn fatal in an instant.

Such stories were common in an era where survival often depended on toughness and sheer willpower. “Most of these men are gone, and I too, nearly got killed a million times. Close. Calls.”

From Logging to Mountains

Arthur Mannix, with whom Raney once skinny‑dipped off a floating logging camp in Sitka, planted the idea of Denali. Mannix later died, but his influence carried forward. “Intrigued, I too climbed that mountain, many times as a Mountain Guide.” This shift from logger to mountaineer echoed the resilience, risk, and reverence for nature that logging had instilled in him.

Just as logging had tested his endurance and survival instincts, the family carried that same spirit into their own adventures. In 1984, they hiked the historic Chilkoot Pass, the Klondike Gold Rush trail from 1898, with all four children—then ages 8, 6, 4 (Misty, born November 1979), and even 2‑year‑old Matthew. Because the White Pass Railroad was closed, the trek stretched an extra five miles. Midway through, a storm rolled in. Far above the treeline, the family was exposed to snow and rain driven by high winds. Marty spotted what looked like an “oversized doghouse” in the clouds—it turned out to be a survival shelter. Inside, the children warmed up with hot water from the campstove and their spirits quickly lifted. A Canadian ranger soon knocked on the plywood door, checking in on “that Alaskan family with the four little kids.” He explained he had been sent to search for them in the storm, but seeing they would pull through, he left behind a small bag of candy before disappearing back into the night—a moment of unexpected kindness that turned a dangerous crossing into a lasting family memory.

That day became a vivid example of Raney grit—resilience in the face of storms, quick thinking, and a deep trust in each other. That same resilience later defined his Denali climbs. He first summited in 1986, climbing in simple bunny boots—a practical, unfancy choice that became part of his legend. On his second expedition in 1988, alongside climber Jim Okenek, he carried an Ibanez large-body 12-string guitar to the summit—a heavy, unlikely companion at 20,310 feet and the first guitar ever taken to the top. In the years that followed, all four of his children went on to summit Denali themselves, joining Marty and his wife in making the Raneys one of the rare families to achieve such a feat. He often recalled that 1988 climb with the Ibanez guitar when telling how Coldplay’s Chris Martin later asked him to return with a Martin guitar—a story that underscored how those mountain moments became part of his enduring legacy.

Epilogue: Life Circles Back

The survival lessons from logging camps and mountain trails continued to echo through the Raney family’s adventures, and they shaped the perspective with which Marty looks back on his life. Raney reflects on how life circled back in surprising ways. “Long after I set off for Alaska, they shot the David Lynch series Twin Peaks in the Mar‑T Cafe on the right, where I stopped every Friday night to grab a burger and fries.” The very roads he once traveled as a teenager, boots soaked in logging grit, became immortalized in television history.

Legacy of a Logger

Yet beyond those unexpected brushes with pop culture, it was the logging mentors and hard‑edged teachers who left the deepest mark on Raney’s life.

“This picture brings me back to the beginning. A few core people who hired me, taught me, and were good to me. Yet, not one of them ever knew the impression they made on me.”

Poncho Forrister, Sam Forrister, Harold Hern, Bill McCracken, Duane Tibbles, John Schnabel, Ted Smith, Arthur Mannix, and many others—each shaped the logger, guide, and man Marty Raney became. As he puts it: “I suppose the person I am today is largely due to Poncho and his father, who obviously hired me knowing I was only age 16 doing the world’s most dangerous job, or at least one of them.”